


nitrogen

by EastOfEll



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, hello i am back with another fix it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-14
Updated: 2017-11-14
Packaged: 2019-02-02 11:24:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12725712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EastOfEll/pseuds/EastOfEll
Summary: maggie tries navigating her life without alex by her side. of course, this doesn't work, because we all know the show made a big mistake and maggie and alex are meant to be.a fix it fic. maggie's pov.





	nitrogen

**Author's Note:**

> i literally can't remember the last time i wrote something this long so you're welcome i guess? enjoy!

“What are we doing?” she asks. “Are you sure you wanna give up on this? You sure you wanna do this?”

 

(And as Alex explains how she just _knew_ she was going to be a mother, Maggie realizes, _this is it_. She gave Alex an out, a way to start patching this up, and she didn’t take it. She wishes she could go back to about an hour ago, when their heated make outs had started to turn into more, and say, _Hey! She’s actually going to end this; take all the love you were going to pour into this night and multiply it by the years you could’ve spent together and won’t, because this will be the last time_.

 

Because just before Alex’s eyes close and she bites her lip and her face scrunches up in pleasure from Maggie’s hands, fingers, tongue, just before her thighs start to shake in orgasm, right as her back snaps into an arch, Maggie thinks, _Let me have this. God, please let me have this._

 

He doesn’t.)

 

When the door closes for the final time, Maggie stares at the grain of the door, the peephole it feels like she looked through only yesterday, carrying pizza, beer, an injured shoulder, and a confession. She can hear Alex’s muffled crying, can almost visualize the rings left on the table sparkling as they catch the dim, artificial light.

 

She wants to swing the door open, take Alex into her arms and comfort her, but she knows that’s not an option. How can you try to heal a wound you caused in the first place? So she just stares at the door a few more seconds before turning her back and walking down the stairs.

 

Maggie isn't used to losing people. She's sure most people would look at her hard edges and traumatic past and think so― that to her, losing someone would be a daily routine, like walking a dog or taking a shower.

 

But losing people requires you to get them get close enough to feel a loss in the first place. This is something Maggie doesn’t let happen often, it at all. So when she loses Alex, she's stuck, because how can she go on knowing the other half of her soul is out there? Is it selfish to think Alex feels just as lost as her?

 

Maggie is fourteen again, with only a suitcase. Maggie is twenty-four again, with only the guilt of the night before.

 

A few days into living in the life of a single woman (“singledom”, she remembers Alex dubbing it), her phone rings. She’s in her borrowed apartment alone; her coworker is out on a shift. Maggie’s surprised to see Eliza Danvers’s name as the caller ID.

 

“Hello, Mrs. Danvers?” Maggie picks up. “Is something wrong with Alex?”

 

“No,” Eliza says. “I just want to know how it’s going with you.”

 

Maggie’s heart drops. “Did she not tell you?”

 

“She did. Her and Kara just left; they spent the weekend in Midvale.”

 

“And you… still want to talk to me?”

 

“Oh, honey.” Eliza sighs. “Heartbreak is a two way street, and from what I’ve heard, you’re not the one who made the final decision. I care about Alex, of course, but I care about you, too, and I don’t want to lose the connection I had with you just because you aren’t with her anymore. Is that okay?”

 

“Yeah…” Maggie tries to gather her words. “It’s okay, I just… it surprised me, is all.”

 

“Tell me how you’re feeling. Let me catch up with you.”

 

(So she does. Maggie tells Eliza how empty she feels, how hurt she is, every single day― how she feels like everything has crashed around her and there’s nothing she can do about it, there’s _never_ anything she can do about it.

 

And Eliza listens.)

 

Maggie gets lucky, if she could call it that; after staying at one of her coworker’s apartment for two weeks, she found an apartment in the building she used to live in, on the base floor, the door outside. It only took a single day and her coworker in question, Williams, to help her move in. A couch, a bed, and some things in a box is all she owns. (She calls Eliza when she’s done; Maggie talks about how her upstairs neighbor likes to play loud music early in the morning, sometimes, and she can’t sleep, and Eliza recalls stories of when Alex was barely in elementary school and the neighbors kept allowing their mulberry bush to grow into their yard.)

 

*

 

Maggie is good at organizing, and always has been. She’d organized her life into certain parts: before The Outing, after The Outing and before Emily, during Emily, after Emily and before Alex.

 

She now thinks of them as before, during, and after Alex.

 

She's at a constant feeling of walking to the fridge only to stare at it, not knowing what to eat: everything seems to remind her of Alex, and her body yearns to feel the warmth and comfort it used to bring― it manages to, for a few seconds, before the news hits her brain that her chosen family has been ripped away from her, and then she just feels cold. She's stuck at a fork in the road when all she wants to do is turn and run back.

 

Maggie doesn't like grieving, never really learned how to, only knowing how to cope, so that's what she does. She throws herself into her work and avoids the alien bar if she can, but she still sees Alex every time she walks by the ice cream section at the store, every dog she sees being walked by its owner in the street, every kid, every mother. Every time Supergirl is shown on television, she tries to look for the agents in black she knows are working behind the scenes.

 

She was stupid. Maggie Sawyer was _stupid_. She should know by now that her heart can beg all it wants to love, but it's not designed to be loved back. No matter how hard she fights back, it doesn’t matter. Alex thought she was broken; it turns out she had been loving the wrong way. But Maggie doesn’t love the wrong way, because she’s known she’s gay since middle school. So what’s wrong with her, exactly?

 

The worst part is, she can't blame Alex. She wasn't enough for Alex. Alex deserves better. Alex is probably having the time of her life sucking face with some blonde who wants to be a mother, too, and Maggie goes to gay bars and has sex with the women she meets there because having an orgasm is one of the few ways to distract herself from her loneliness without waking up in the morning with a killer hangover. That, she doesn’t tell Eliza about.

 

(“Has Alex moved on?” Maggie asks one day, when she can’t control it, when she really hates herself and how pathetic she must seem.

 

“She goes on dates, but hasn’t really found anything too permanent,” Eliza admits.

 

Maggie tells the small blossoming in her chest to shut the hell up, and she tells herself the hope she hears in Eliza’s tone is a delusion.)

 

*

 

Two months later Alex and Maggie break it off, Maggie becomes some sort of temporary superhero when a house on fire is fixing to collapse, and because firefighters and Supergirl are busy helping a bad situation at the bank, Maggie runs into the building to save two trapped kids without even thinking. She can’t even leave her apartment without people breathing down her back.

 

Part of it has to do with knowing it was the right thing to do, sure, but another, more selfish part is because sometimes, she realizes she doesn’t have anything to live for anymore. She survives, sure, but she doesn’t _live_.

 

When her Captain mentions getting an award, she balks.

 

“Really, sir?” she asks.

 

The Captain nods. “You have a good heart Sawyer, and when you went into that burning building, it’s almost as if you didn’t think before deciding saving those kids was the best option.” The Captain’s eyes darken for a short second. “I know that, sometimes, it doesn't feel this way, but a lot of people care about you and think you deserve this.”

 

Yes, because her entire precinct knows she'd practically been left at the altar. As someone who doesn't even like when the other officers know her birthday, it's not a feeling she enjoys. She knows they still walk on eggshells around her, and she also knows that the Captain does his absolute best to make sure most cases she takes aren’t large enough for the D.E.O. to be involved― not because he thinks she can’t handle it, but because he knows Alex works there. Still, though, Maggie seems to run into Supergirl, or Kara, pretty often, which means Alex is probably avoiding her on her side, too. (She knows she could feel insulted, but all she can do is feel the same way Alex does.) “Thank you, sir.”

 

When they're going over the schedule of the formal awards ceremony, they plan to have Supergirl place the new badges on her uniform.

 

“Are you sure?” Maggie asks. “I mean, I don't really need all that pizazz.”

 

The Captain raises a bushy eyebrow. “You're the one who wanted better relations between Supergirl and the NCPD. It'd look a little odd, especially to the people who know you.”

 

And Maggie deflates, because he’s right, because in less than a week, Maggie’s going to have to see the woman that was supposed to be her sister-in-law and act like her life hasn’t fallen apart.

 

That night comes a lot more quickly than Maggie expected. She buttons up her dress uniform, remembering one the time Alex had peeled it off of her, and sighs. _Not now_.

 

Her coworkers will be there, out of obligation, sure, but they genuinely support her becoming captain (except Paulson, who hates women in the force and got stuck with having to work on alien cases, but Paulson can go fuck himself. No one likes him.), and M’gann, who had been visiting, is going to be there, too.

 

She doesn’t _need_ Alex.

 

She tries to pay attention to her fellow officers and M’gann, sitting in the front row, applauding her as she gets her promotion, but it’s _hard_ , Kara only a few inches from her in her Supergirl getup, both of them pretending like this whole situation isn’t an absolute garbage fire.

 

As she betrays herself and allows her eyes to sweep through the crowd, she sees a flash of auburn hair and freezes― not obviously but enough to where Kara’s fingers pause on her shoulder, enough for M’gann to get a look of worry on her face.

 

M’gann walks up to her during the afterparty, after Maggie’s been congratulated more times than she could keep up with. “You okay?”

 

“I’m… no, not really, but I’ll live.” Maggie has been learning to be more honest. When she sees Kara talking with someone, she pats M’gann on the shoulder. “I need to speak to Supergirl for a second.”

 

M’gann, with a look of frustration but understanding in her eyes, nods and walks off.

 

“Supergirl!” Maggie all but shouts, and Kara whips around, the beginnings of regret starting to form in her eyes. “A word.”

 

They’re close enough that the people around them are too busy mingling to pay attention. “Yes Detective, what is it?”

 

“Was Alex here?” Maggie asks. When Kara doesn’t answer, Maggie lowers her voice to where most humans wouldn’t be able to hear her if they were standing right next to her, but Kara can hear every word. “Kara, please. I just want to know. I’m not blaming you for anything.”

 

Kara’s eyes say all the answer Maggie needs to hear.

 

“Thanks.” Maggie all but shoves Kara away, knowing she didn’t feel it, but feeling a little guilty deep down, and grabs a chute of champagne from the nearest host, a teenage-looking boy looking too small for his cumberbund.

 

She’s on her third glass, the two beforehand resting at the bar top beside her, when a woman with dirty blonde hair and a maroon dress walks up.

 

“You celebrating?” she asks.

 

Maggie hums. “Not really.”

 

“You just got honors for saving a pair of kids,” she states.

 

“Yeah, but apparently my ex-fiancee showed up to see the ceremony, so it could be better,” Maggie says, and takes a sip from her drink.

 

“Damn,” the woman says. “I’m sorry.”

 

Maggie shrugs. “Not your fault.”

 

“You know, if you want to drink your sorrows away, champagne isn’t really the drink to do it. I’m a bartender; my friend is a reporter and had an extra seat she brought me here, so let me return the favor. This party may be partially in your honor, but I’m sure no one would notice if you decided to leave a little early.”

 

Maggie’s eyebrows raise. “Show me the way, then...”

 

“Jessica,” the woman says, and Maggie follows her out the door.

 

*

 

Maggie wakes up in Jessica’s apartment, in her bed. But this time is different. This time, she gets dressed as per usual, but writes a quick note about an early shift at the station, about paperwork to fill out, cases to solve, and she leaves her number below her name.

 

Because why not, right?

 

*

 

“Hey, Maggie.” Maggie’s sitting on the couch in her kind-of-still new apartment, drinking a glass of water and watching Netflix on a Thursday off, just a week after meeting Jessica. A good time to call Eliza. “How’s it been?”

 

“Well…” She has no reason why she shouldn’t be honest. “I met someone.”

 

“That’s great! What’s she like?”

 

“Well, we met at my ceremony…”

 

“Yes, I saw on the news. I would’ve come, but I figured since you didn’t tell me, you didn’t want me to.”

 

“That’s not it!” Maggie says. “I just… you’re all the way in Midvale. I didn’t really think about it. Sorry. Really, I am.”

 

She can almost hear Eliza contemplating on the other side of the phone. _Oh, poor Maggie,_ she must be thinking, _who never realizes when people care about her_. (She’s not entirely wrong.) “Okay, well, next time something happens, I want to be there for you, okay? You deserve that.”

 

Maggie nods before realizing Eliza can’t see her. “Yes. Of course. Okay.”

 

“Now, tell me about Jessica.”

 

And Maggie does. About how Jessica is blonde with dark green eyes, about how she’s a reporter, not at CatCo, but at a smaller tribune. About how she and Maggie are planning to go on their first date in the upcoming weekend. She rambles, mostly, but Eliza is an attentive listener, and it’s something Maggie appreciates.

 

In this moment, Maggie finally understands something she hadn’t had in so long she’d almost forgotten what it felt like: a relationship between a mother and a daughter.

 

*

Jessica is nice, Maggie thinks, but she’s not Alex.

 

May she’s a bad person for thinking this― Jessica had known right off the bat that Maggie had an ex-fiancee, and she didn’t seem too winded by it. They acted like any normal couple, but Jessica seemed to know when Maggie would see or hear or smell something that reminded her of Alex, and would touch the small of her back comfortingly.

 

Jessica… is _nice_. She’s 5’10 and still, somehow, a little spoon, she loves organic cereal and mockumentaries, and she and Maggie will stay up until the wee hours to watch them together if Maggie doesn’t have an extremely early shift the next morning.

 

But Maggie still expects the sound of two phones ringing when a hostile alien needs to be taken down, she still expects her fingers to stop at the shoulders when she threads her fingers through her girlfriend’s hair instead of continuing to the middle of the back, she still expects it to be _Alex_.

 

Does this make her a bad person?

 

“You’re healing, Maggie,” Eliza says, “and this is normal. It may seem like it won’t heal now, but that’s because only time can truly heal what was broken. Don’t beat yourself up over this.”

 

So Maggie does something that, if it were a sport, she’d be an Olympic gold medalist: she bottles up how she feels.

 

*

The bottle bursts.

 

It’s not her who bursts, though, it’s Jessica. Almost four months into their relationship, Maggie comes home later than she expected, and she’s surprised to see Jessica standing there.

 

“Oh, hey Jess,” she says, “is something wrong?”

 

“My sister is having a baby in a day or two,” Jessica says. “I want you to come.”

 

“You came into my apartment at,” Maggie checks her watch, “12:30 in the morning to ask me that? It couldn’t wait?”

 

“I wanted to leave for a flight this afternoon,” Jessica explains. “My family lives in Idaho. I want you to come along.”

 

“I… I don’t know. The case I’m working on, it’s really big, and they need me.” It’s not a lie, but it’s not the whole truth, either. Meeting the family is a milestone Maggie doesn’t know if she’s willing to take. Hell, she still works with Alex’s sister and calls Alex’s mom like she would her own if her own actually cared.

 

Jessica narrows her eyes. “Or you don’t want to meet my family?”

 

“Of course I do! It’s just… My last relationship―”

 

“You two went really fast and it’s still affecting you, I know,” Jessica says. “I’m not saying four months is a ton of time, but it’s a really happy occasion. It’s not like you’d be meeting them at a funeral. I only have a mom and two siblings with a kid each. We’re not huge, I promise.”

 

“I… I don’t know, Jessica.” _Kids._ The reason she and Alex broke up.

 

“It sounds like you do, and you don’t want to. And, come on, _how_ do you have that look on your face?”

 

“What look?” Maggie asks.

 

“The _something-reminded-me-of-Alex_ look.”

 

Maggie’s eyebrows draw together. “I don’t have a look!”

 

“You do! Every time you see a dog, or Supergirl, or that one time we went to a bar with your police buddies and there were pool tables. Every time we go by that one hipster yoga place, I have to practically drag you past it because you’ll just stand there and stare if I don’t. Look, Maggie, you’re a good person, and I don’t blame you for any of this, but it seems like you’re not over whoever Alex is. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, and I don’t know what it’s like to go through a huge break up like that, but I don’t know if I can continue being in a relationship with you if you’re still pining over someone I’ve never even met.”

 

“I’m not still pining after her.”

 

“Almost everything seems to make you think of her. You’re not over her. I’m sorry Maggie, just,” and Jessica huffs, “I’m not mad at you, I… I just can’t keep doing this. Call me if you need me, okay? I need to leave.”

 

And, once again, Maggie is left alone, instead this time, she’s the one in the dimly lit apartment, and she’s not the one to close the door.

 

*

 

It’s two days later that Maggie realizes she’s not even angry, or sad, just disappointed. Not even the disappointment she should be feeling over ending a four-month relationship― it’s the kind of disappointment one gets when they’re in the middle of making a sandwich and they realize the mayonnaise is expired and needs to be thrown away. Disappointed, but not _disappointed_.

 

Her phone rings during work, but she’s only doing paperwork, and the Captain doesn’t mind if they take personal calls as long as it’s a slow day and it’s not too inappropriate.

 

She unlocks her phone. “Sawyer.”

 

“Hey, Maggie.” It’s Eliza, and her voice is hoarse.

 

“Eliza?”

 

“I’m sorry, is this a bad time? I know you’re probably at work right now.”

 

Maggie looks at the stacks of paperwork she still has yet to fill out. “Don’t worry about it.”

 

“I don’t know if I should be telling you this, but I think you should know. Alex got injured trying to fight a large alien last night.” Maggie’s breath draws in. She had seen Supergirl defeat something on the news that night before, and knows exactly how terrible it looked. She had been tempted to ask to be assigned on the case, but she knew better, and she had learned to tamper down the feeling of wanting to help when she knew that not only did the D.E.O. usually have it covered and Maggie can be just as useful elsewhere, but the selfish part of her doesn’t want to run into Alex. The flash of her at the ceremony had been painful enough. “She was in surgery. She’s okay, but she’s not awake yet. Kara is helping put out a few fires to ease her nerves, but I’m just sitting here in the room.”

 

“Alex is right there?” Maggie almost whispers it.

 

“She is, but she’s sleeping, Maggie. It’s not like she knows I’m calling you.”

 

“Okay. But… she’s alright, right?”

 

“Barely.” Eliza’s voice is tired. “I… I’m still not used to her being out in the field. I never got used to it with Jeremiah, you know.”

 

“I… yeah.”

 

“Enough depressing talk, though. How’s Jessica?”

 

Oh. “Uh, we broke up.”

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

“It was amicable. She’s… she said she wasn’t mad at me.”

 

“Oh, Maggie. What happened?”

 

“It doesn’t really matter,” Maggie sighs. “I feel like it means something that I don’t even feel that broken up about it.”

 

“You still sound hung up over something, though.”

 

But not because of Jessica. She doesn’t want to admit it to Eliza. “Maybe. I…” She looks up at the precinct, crawling at the pace of a snail. “I think a new case just came in, though. I’m gonna go look at what it is.”

 

“Okay, Maggie. Have a good day.”

 

“You, too. I’m glad Alex is okay.” She hangs up, guilt nibbling at her insides, but she didn’t know what else to do.

 

When she goes to the bathroom, she washes her face, forcing herself not to cry. That can only happen after too much beer and a sad movie where a dog dies. But not now, not at work, not when her coworkers are finally starting to stop treating her like she’s some sort of widower.

 

Maybe she is, in a way.

 

*

 

It happens on a rainy night a few weeks later. Quiet jazz soothes Maggie’s nerves, along with a glass of cheap wine, as she reads some thriller novel she saw sitting on one of the promotional shelves at the front of a bookstore.

 

A knock on the door.

 

Maggie doesn’t think much of it; she assumes it’s someone lost and looking for directions, or maybe their car battery died and they need a jumpstart.

 

She doesn’t expect Alex, wet and shaking, as if she’d been standing there for five minutes before finally getting the courage to knock.

 

“Alex?” Her voice is small, cowardly, and slightly hoarse.

 

Alex’s voice is just as small. “Hey.”

 

“Why are you here.” It’s not a question.

 

“I almost died,” is her answer. “Some big, blue alien with a ton of horns. Maybe you heard about it, and how Supergirl was barely able to defeat it.” (Of course she did.) “It smacked me against a building, broke my ribs and collapsed my lung, and I’ve been in the hospital for the past two weeks.” (She knows.)

 

“Why are you out in the rain, then?” Maggie asks.

 

Alex ignores her and continues speaking. “You know what I realized, sitting in a hospital bed, high on morphine, for two weeks? I realized I can’t _be_ a mom, Maggie. Not with my job, not with the dedication I have to it. That’s not something I can give up. And it devastated me… but I think it also freed me.”

 

Maggie’s eyebrows draw together in confusion.

 

“I took terrible advantage of you. The _concept_ of you. Maybe I used kids as an excuse, I don’t know, but I took advantage of the fact that I met the love of my life so _soon_ into realizing I was a lesbian, and I either didn’t know yet, or I didn’t care, and that’s entirely my fault. You’re my soulmate, Maggie.” Maggie draws in a breath when Alex says _soulmate._  “It’s not like I didn’t know that before; I did, but with you gone, I learned what it’s like to live in a world where the _one_ person you’re meant to be with is there, _right_ there in front of you, and you can’t have them, have _her_.”

 

“Alex… I don’t know what to say.”

 

Alex is in tears now, and Maggie’s mind is whirring too fast to realize that it’s mingling with the heavy rain. Her eyes are wet, crazy, and her fingers are stretched out, clenching and unclenching, as if they’re trying to grab the words Alex can’t find. “Did you know,” she says, “that oxygen only makes up twenty percent of the atmosphere?”

 

“... What?”

 

“Oxygen is only a small part of our atmosphere. Almost eighty percent of what we breathe is nitrogen. There’s also argon, carbon dioxide, and a ton of other small gases. But we call it oxygen because our bodies don’t need nitrogen― it’s a stabilizer, it’s inert, and we actually need oxygen to live. Maggie… you’re like my oxygen. Maybe you’re not… not a _huge_ percentage of my life, maybe you’ll make me leave and I’ll never see you again, not that I can blame you―” Alex looks down at her shaking hands, “but when you left, everything was just nitrogen, Maggie. My job, hanging out at the bar, kids―” A sob escapes her throat. “It was all just nitrogen. It was just _there_. I don’t need it, I don’t, I just need _you_ , Maggie, I―” She stops. “I should just go.”

 

Maggie’s brain starts working when Alex is several steps out. “Wait!” she calls, stepping out in the rain herself. “Stop!”

 

Alex turns around as Maggie nears her. “Ignore the dumb analogy,” she murmurs.

 

“No, don’t, it’s cute,” Maggie says, a feeling of deja vu washing over her. She shakes her head, ignoring it. “Alex, back when you told me Kara was Supergirl, I said you get one more chance.”

 

“I know,” Alex says. “That’s why I can’t blame you if you don’t want to do anything, But I― The fact that we had a disagreement that we weren’t going to be able to compromise on or talk through scared me. We hadn’t done that before. Another first, I guess. But, Maggie, I can’t be a mom. It was a dream I had when I was younger, sure, but I also dreamed of being an astronaut and a doctor and spy at the same time.”

 

“You’ve knocked two out of three,” Maggie points out, and Alex gives a huff of laughter.

 

“Yeah, but we all want things we can’t have, especially when we’re kids. And I realized… I made the wrong choice. I did, and I hate myself for it. You always… talk about how you want me to be happy, and you sometimes do that at the cost of _you_. And I guess I was okay with that because I’d have done the same for you, and, I don’t know, a part of me thought I wasn’t the one for you if I couldn’t satisfy you, and you’d find someone with the same opinion as your own. I thought… I thought we fit each other in so many ways, but if we don’t for one thing, you should try to find the person who does, right?”

 

Maggie’s shaking her head, trying to form words to disagree, but can’t find the right ones, and Alex continues. “But I realized that life isn’t perfect; it’s not _supposed_ to be. Having a family and friends and a soulmate, if you will, isn’t about being perfectly molded for each other, it’s about having things you know you’ll never agree on but deciding the relationship you have with someone is more important than trying to strive for something you’ll never be able to reach. I don’t have a perfect relationship with anyone in my life― Kara, my mom, J’onn― but I’m okay with that because I love them. And I love you, too, Maggie, I love you so much. Maybe we aren’t _perfect_ for each other, but we’re pretty damn close, and that’s not something a lot of people can say.

 

And… I’ve realized I don’t want kids if it’s not with you, Maggie. You’re the _only_ person I can even fathom having them with. When I was a girl, I’d imagine some strange form of a man because that’s what the world told me I was supposed to imagine. But these past few months, when I imagined having kids― and trust me, I did, a lot― I could only imagine raising them with you. You’re a part of that package now. And if you don’t want it? Fine. I don’t care. You’re more important. I choose you, Maggie.” Alex hiccups, shoulder heaving, tears and rain water streaming down her face. “I want to choose you every morning when I wake up, and every night when I go to bed. I choose _you,_ every single fucking time, and I―”

 

A boom of thunder interrupts her thoughts, and Maggie suddenly remembers her and Alex are standing in the middle of a storm. “Maybe… we should go inside.”

 

“You sure?” Alex asks.

 

“Babe, you’re soaking.” Alex blushes at the pet name, and Maggie blushes that it still comes this easily, even after all this time. “I am, too. We should get warm.”

 

Alex’s eyebrows wiggle playfully, not suggestively, and Maggie scoffs. “Yeah, right. Now get your butt in my bathroom; don’t ruin my carpet.”

 

After they get cleaned up, Maggie turns on the fireplace, and the two women are curled in blankets next to it, close enough to hear the other one breathing, but not close enough, both of them think, though they’d never voice it.

 

“I missed you.” Alex’s voice breaks the silence.

 

“Me, too.”

 

“...For what it’s worth,” Alex starts, “if I have to say this every day for the rest of my life until you believe me, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

 

“I believe you, Alex.” Drops of water trail down the back of Maggie’s neck from her hair that’s partly up, and she rubs the blanket against it, trying to get rid of the cold feeling it gave her. “I just… maybe if I had fought for you harder―”

 

“Don’t say that. You fought hard enough. You always have; what happened wasn’t your fault, okay? You didn’t do anything.” Maggie shies away, head down, and Alex takes a hand that had been in her blanket and cups Maggie’s face, her thumb naturally skirting the lines of her dimples before she can stop it. “Listen to me. I love you. I choose you, and I always will. I know… I know some of my past actions haven’t said that, but I’m going to spend the rest of our lives proving those wrong, you hear me?”

 

And, god, Maggie can’t help it. Alex looking at her with warm, brown eyes, her soft palm against Maggie’s jaw, the crackling of the fireplace. Alex had leaned in for her declaration, and Maggie only evens the playing field, leans in just as far.

 

When their lips meet, Maggie feels hot, like fire is licking at her metaphorical heels, and she lunges forward, she can’t help but to open her mouth and suck in Alex like in her throat lies the breath she stole from Maggie’s lungs, all she wants is for her hands to trail the map they’ve traveled plenty of times before―

 

But she stops, because she knows they can’t just dive into the deep end without wading through the shallows first. She pulls away, the desire in the air thick enough to cut with a knife, as when Maggie looks at Alex, she sees the same feelings of want mirrored back in the other woman’s eyes.

 

“Sorry,” Maggie says on an instinct.

 

“Don’t be,” Alex’s voice is low, but controlled, her eyes still on Maggie’s lips. “We should… take it slow.”

 

“Yeah,” Maggie agrees. Alex looks up. “Like, I’m still going to live here. And when we get married…” Alex’s eyes soften at _when_. “You still have the rings, right?”

 

“Of course I do,” Alex says in a tone that leaves no room for other answers.

 

“Okay.” Maggie holds out her hand and Alex takes it, their fingers intertwining. “I just… I forgive you, Alex. And I don’t want you thinking that’s what I always do, that you don’t deserve it, that you should take pity on me― don’t. Do you deserve forgiveness after what happened? Honestly, I don’t know. I wouldn’t do this for just anyone, and I haven’t. I’ve left for less. I think… I think we were both scared of not being perfect, not because we thought that’s what _we_ deserved, but because that’s what we thought the other one did. Alex, you’ve told me you don’t need perfect, and I want you to know I don’t either. At this point, I’m not striving for perfection… I’m just striving for normality. And you give me that. You make me feel on fire― I think we can both attest to that―” Alex snickers at this comment, “― but you also make me feel calm, you make me feel certain that I’ve finally done something _right_. I don’t get to feel that very often… and for a while there, you didn’t let me, and that wasn’t right. We can both admit that. But, Alex, that’s okay, because for one instance where I have to give more, you’ll give more, too. This isn’t about being 50/50 all the time. Sometimes one of us is gonna need more than that, and I’m prepared for that.

 

I know you feel really terrible for what you did― you should, but I’m okay with starting again and trying to make this work, because I’ve never loved someone the way I love you. That’s why I’m nervous about the idea of kids. You… you know I’m not entirely used to having a lot of support.” Maggie’s eyes turn sad. “I just… you admitted you don’t know if you could prioritize kids with the life you have, right? I guess I’m the same. I… it may sound selfish, but I don’t like the idea of sharing you. Kara, I get. She was here first, and even though it doesn’t seem like it sometimes, you don’t _have_ to mother her.”

 

“Hey, no,” Alex says. “You’re not selfish, okay? You’re not wrong for feeling that way. I want you to know, though, I can love you and any metaphorical kid infinitely, just like I love you and Kara infinitely. It doesn’t matter who I meet first, or how long it’s been. I don’t run out of room in my heart. There’s no capacity.”

 

“I know,” Maggie says. “Like, the logical part of me knows, but the emotional part of me just isn’t used to that.”

 

“I don’t blame you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, okay?”

 

“Of course. I do, too. But when we say those vows, Alex― whether it’s two weeks or two years from now― that’s it. There’s no turning back. I told you ride or die, Alex, and I mean it. You have to mean it, too.”

 

“I do,” Alex says, and her voice is a whisper, her eyes are watery. “Even when we were in my apartment, and that door closed, and our rings were off― I would’ve still done anything for you, Maggie, even if that meant letting you go.”

 

“I didn’t _want_ to be let go.”

 

“I thought… I dunno, I thought it’d be better for you to have someone who didn't want kids, just like you thought I needed someone who _did_ want kids.” Alex sighs. “You were right. We should’ve worked this out months ago. I was stubborn.”

 

“Well,” Maggie says, shooting Alex a soft grin, “it’s not like I fell in love with you not knowing that.”

 

“I guess so.” Alex returns a smile.

 

“And that metaphor with the nitrogen?”

 

“Maggie―” Alex starts to whine.

 

“What? It was cute! You’re just a nerd.”

 

“There’s nothing wrong with being smart.”

 

Maggie’s eyes soften at that. “You know I never said that.”

 

“Hmph, well, maybe you’ll remember that when you try to mock me for trying to explain how I feel through science. It’s logical, Maggie. Emotions? They’re science.”

 

“What would the fun in that be?” Maggie bites back a yawn before realizing, “We should probably go to bed. Do you want to sleep in the same room, or―”

 

“I want to be the big spoon,” Alex says right as Maggie begins to ask her question, and she turns red when it registers in her ears what Maggie was asking. “For once,” she adds.

 

Maggie chuckles. “Guess that answers that, then.”

 

They lay in bed, Alex’s chin tucked into the crook of Maggie’s neck, and Alex says, “Kara knows I’m here, so she probably won’t burst in.”

 

“You told her you were coming to where I live?”

 

Alex closes her eyes and mumbles, “I left a note on the hospital bed.”

 

Maggie sighs, because, of course Alex discharged herself. Somehow reading Maggie’s thoughts, Alex huffs, eyes still closed, a, “I’m a _doctor_! A double doctor, in fact! I _know_ I’m fine!”

 

“If you get uncomfortable, though, please feel free to move, okay? I don’t want you getting injured even more.”

 

“I’m fine.” Alex snuggles, albeit gently, into Maggie. “Jus’ want you.”

 

They fall asleep to the quiet pitter patter of the rain as the storm dies down, Frank Sinatra still playing softly in the living room.

 

*

 

Alex and Maggie have to take the next week off of work due to getting sick as a pair of dogs from standing in the rain, but with all the vacation days both of them have racked up over the past several years, it’s easy to achieve.

 

They can’t get up and their diet consists of crackers for almost two days, but if you ask Maggie, she’s never been happier.


End file.
